Many cancers have proven to be hereditary. Breast and colon cancer, for example, are known to be passed down through families. This has caused many scientists to take a closer look at melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer, to see if it too is one of the cancers which can be passed down through genetic mutations. It seems as though researchers in Queensland, Australia and researchers in Britain may have found the answer.

Five genetic mutations have been found which, “increase the risk of developing melanoma by almost 60 percent”. These genetic faults have nothing to do with skin, hair, or eye color. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that:

“…the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, compared the genome of more than 2000 Australians with melanoma with more than 4000 people without the disease. They found that people with a variation in two genetic regions on chromosome one had a 30 per cent increased risk of developing melanoma compared with people without the variations. The team believes one of these faults lies within a gene known to cause melanoma in zebrafish.”

The Australians were not the only ones however, on to the fact that there may be a genetic mutation which causes melanoma. Researchers in Britain were also looking into this possibility. In fact, the Australians posted their results with a British study posted in Nature Genetics which identified three more genetic regions which could cause an increase in one’s risk for melanoma.

As CBC News states, “The discoveries may help to unravel how the deadly skin cancer develops”. It is interesting also, that two countries on the other side of the globe from each other would each be studying the same thing. Both teams were looking at the, “…very short sections of DNA known as SNPs, which may point to different variants of the gene that the SNP is part of. The aim is to find SNPs, and hence gene variants, that correlate with having melanoma”.

This allowed the teams to use each other’s research as a means of checking to see if SNPs that were related to Melanoma really did exist. Four of the sections proved to be significant in both studies.

“These four SNPs are in addition to at least seven others related to melanoma found in earlier genetic studies. These earlier SNPs relate to skin pigmentation and moles, which is significant as many melanomas start from an abnormal mole.”

The next step for the scientists was to figure out which genes the SNPs belonged to. What they found to be most interesting, is that these new SNPs had nothing to do with the pigment of skin or moles.

So what does this all mean? Eventually, scientists may be able to identify exactly who is most at risk for melanoma. Like breast cancer and colon cancer, patients who are at risk for melanoma will be able to take the necessary steps to prevent themselves from contracting the cancer, by catching it early on. MoleSafe will be an important tool for these patients to use.